Haley's Poker Blog

No bad beats, but still a poker blog... hence the anguish.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I'm In Love with My Truck and the Dog's Pregnant Ag'in

Poker content: marginal. But don't fret. Despite the fact that I've been on a personal poker run from hell for about the last six weeks, when I've had the odd moment to play, there's a couple of Haley specials on the way --- involved topics that I want to explore more fully.

In the meantime, however, a friend of mine forwarded me this link to a list of all-time great country-western song titles. Note that these are for real, not made up:

Here are a few of my faves from the list:

We Feed Our Babies Onions So We Can Find 'Em In The DarkOne Day When You Swing That Skillet (My Face Ain't Gonna Be There)I Would Kiss You Through the Screendoor but It'd Strain Our LoveHe Went To Sleep and The Hogs Ate Him (Now Claude's Gone Forever)She Looks Good Through the Bottom of My Shot GlassYour Negligee Has Turned To Flannel NightgownsGet Off The Stove, Grandma, You're Too Old To Ride The RangeI Fell for Her, She Fell for Him, and He Fell for MeI Spent My Last Ten Dollars on Birth Control and Beer

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

My Favorite Poker-Blog Spammer Kook Hath Returned...

It was precisely a quarter of a year ago (cue ominous music here), that I received a strange, strange comment spam from schizophrenic party unknown. 6,500 words of weirdness, it was, nor was I the first among us pokery-heathen types to have been bestowed with this author's gift. I'd noticed it first on a Michalski post over at Pokerati, and Falstaff commented that he'd received not only the same original, but an even longer and kookier follow-up.

I've either received the follow-up that Falstaff or yet another screed from the same poker-mesmerized commenter; his style is, shall we say, unmistakable. I've also done a bit more searching around the web and has determined that this is an equal-opportunity spammer, who slaps and copies huge chunks of his various 'messages' into the comments sections of a broad assortment of entertainment and lifestyle blogs. He often signs his posts with such addresses as 90srevelrycyclejustifiedwithclintonlegacy @whychelseawasbeatenwithanuglystick.com, which is kinda funny, at that. Evidence within his posts suggest that's he middle-aged (50-ish?), may have a Jewish upbringing, and lives, generally speaking, in the California Bay Area.

In a way, it makes me glad I don't live in California, not that people like this don't exist elsewhere. After all, it's kooks like these that got the likes of Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback elected.

This latest bowel movement to pollute my inbox is just short of 26,000 words. No, I'm not gonna subject you to all of it, but I do think a quick top-ten list of passages is wholly called for. Actually, I could do ten top-ten lists from this stuff....

So without further ado, 'Ten Things That Some Lunatic Who Spams Poker Blogs Really Believes,' all lovely misspellings intact:

10) "They said there were like 100 Ronald Reagans spanning the length of his long career:::Hollywood, govenor of California then President of the United States. They say less than half are still alive today. I wonder if we set records with this individual."

9) "The optimal ascention senario is when parents depart Earth with their young children BEFORE their minds are posioned by this society. The next best-case senario is when an individual finds the path themself and makes their way out before puberty. Children who go up before puberty are candidates to remain the most superior of all life forms::The asexual. Expect these people to experience subsequent temptations once they arrive to further shrink the pool of candidates. Another example males are inferior to females:::Expect circumcision to play a part in this elimination round."

8) "Your virginity may buy you tens of thousands of years up there. So many of you homeschoolers recognize the cancer that is the public school system yet allow cable television into your home, defeating the purpose."

7) "Lassie was the clue::::The freely admitted there were multpiles, just as there are multiples of your favorite celebrities."

6) "Too many think they saved many during the Noah's Flood event. I suspect black people are very confused regarding their current state and I think this topic can shed light:::: These people living seaside on the Mediterranean during times of lower sea levels were slated for Termination. They were teetering on the brink for a long time. Expect that the gods offered clues prior to the event. If the gods wanted to save any of these people they would given them a second chance by sending them to higher ground. Count on very few being saved, and those whom were are the Ned Flanders rather than the Homer Simpsons."

5) "Yes, they ARE malicious and vindictive and yes, they WOULD beam a brain into a brain-less clone prior to a CAT scan::: 1. Had Hurricane Ivan DESTROY Grand Cayman (1999 vacation) and slice up through the middle of Alabama a mere six months after I was there for ONE full month. 2. Had Hurricane Wilma move up through the Caribbean and park on Cozumel (2002 vacation) for TWO FULL DAYS 3. Used Oakland A's to send a clue (dynasty, win only in crisis, chokers), and to deliver the desired message they inflicted the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 (FOR YEARS there have been very few blacks on this team). 4. Dog food poisoning 20075. E-coli spinach issue of 2006 6. Obviously, they love to be malicious and vindictive. 6. Hawaiian earthquake after Hawaiian jewelry store visit. 7. Hawaiian flooding 2006 8. Local flooding 2006, including Devil's Slide 9. Lake effect snow event of 2007 because I enjoyed the humor behind it 10. I often expressed I enjoy the dynamics/news coverage of hurricanesâ€¦ 11. Six within the last year. There were a whole lot more in the years preceding. 12. 13. 14. Or, more appropriately::::111.112.113.114.And finally::::115. The gods alter the script for the Apocalypse because I sprawled their plan all over the internet."

4) "It will ensure they can position out my rightful benefit package, immortality, entitling them to grant favor based on generosity instead. My seething hatred for those who violated me will ensure I will be beemed to the center of a star on year 10,001."

3) "3:15p. Fuck you god. Computer just went out. Had over a paragraph. I'm so sick of this CHEATING shit. You're all big boys. You raped the disfavored with boss just like you raped me to get boss. Take it like a man, immoral PIGS PIGS PIGS."

2) "The gods use these BLCloneHost tools in many ways. One way is in the context of dating. They will justify the abuse by instructing the computer to create golddigging thoughts. Of course with Italians this thought isn't artificial because so many are an affront. But as I personally know anyone involved with these people are in trouble, for computer-inspired thoughts often will be compensated, a foreboding reality for the people of the 20th century. They gods switch these tools for a new Brain-LessCloneHost and the computer pushes their date into perceiving a difference yet also pushes them into not caring or not wanting to see. The result is she ends up sleeping with multiple men."

1) "Poker/gambling web sites are all controlled by the computer. Other players in the room can be the computer, role playing virtually, stealing the disfavored's money in real time or, ironically, granting them a living by giving them free money, like we saw with Seabiscut. Other times the players are disfavored, granting them good cards so the disfavored player never has to get a job, ensuring he has no chance in this life and has to be reincarnated for he never achieves decency." [DAMMIT! I was gonna buy into this one until the 'Seabiscut' (sic) reference. Except it's donkeys, not racehorses.]

Well, true enough, the author of this is seriously in need of psychological help. Oh, wait, he's already rejected it:

"People who pursue psychoanalysis as a professtion are special, insigfhtful people who do have some depth. Sometime during their education or shortly thereafter they are told the truth, that their chosen profession is preditory, and to do the right thing means walking away from their educational investment. But it is either do this or initiate the clock, for if their stay in their profession their potential is limited."

Sadly, this guy is likely too far gone for psychoanalysis. But it doesn't mean it's not good reading, right? It reads like Redpill would, after about 20 years of forced daily LSD and forced Rev. Wildmon indoctrination.

Oh, no, it's starting::::to::::make::::sense::::to::::me after all. It's the colons; they're the clue. Each colon has two dots, and represents a deuce. I should play all hands with deuces and auto-push on 2-2. Deuces never looses!!!

As a poker blogger, I am delighted to extend this invitation to you to play in this tournament, taking place starting on August 28, 2007.

Bodog is adding a total of $125 in bonus money to the tournament. If you are one of the last 5 players to be eliminated prior to being paid out by the standard payout structure, you will get your buy-in returned by way of a $10 bonus. If you finish 2nd in the tournament you will receive a $25 bonus. And if you finish first, Bodog will give you a $50 bonus.

This is a limited invitation-only tournament so the field will be comprised only of other bloggers and their readers. It’s Bodog’s way of saying thank you for acknowledging your contribution to the great game of poker.

The tournament will run weekly on Tuesday evenings and will require a password for entry that all invited bloggers can promote within their community.

T$50 bonus paid to 1st place finisher. T$25 bonus paid to 2nd place finisher. T$10 bonus paid to the 5 players that are eliminated prior to payouts.

These bonuses will be awarded within 24hrs of the tournament completion. T$ = Tournament Credits. These can be used as a buy in to almost all scheduled tournaments at Bodog and have a ratio to cash of 1:1. T$ can also be combined with cash to buy in to tournaments.

Day of week: Tuesdays Start time: 8:35pm ET

Bodog has committed to run this tournament every Tuesday through October 2nd. If participation warrant’s it, we’ll be able to keep it running and possibly increase the prizes and/or turn this into a poker league with an ongoing leader board!

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Liquidity Issues

One of the things I'd like to do but am having difficulty with at the moment is moving some funds off poker.com and into another site; Poker.com seems to have discontinued their relationship with ePassporte, hence the bother.

It's the result of having all your success at one site over a short period, in a bit of variance within variance, if you know what I mean. It's beginning to be a bother, so if anyone can assist me with this --- you'd need to have an account both at poker.com and also at one of Stars/Bodog/Tilt --- give me a holler. If I don't know you well, you'll need to do the transfer first, but I will be adding in a few percent as a premium for whoever can help me out. And as most of my readers know, I'm a reasonably reputable sort.

Monday, August 13, 2007

The Zogman Game

"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness." --- Miller, from Repo Man

It was Tuesday, July 31st, and John Caldwell (a.k.a. Schecky) and I were swapping e-mails and Skype messages, as we do most days. John's the editor-in-chief of PokerNews.com, and, oh yeah, my boss. We were having a slow news day, a common malaise in the weeks immediately after the WSOP, and we were scrounging a bit for stories.

"What do you think of this one?" John asked, as he forwarded a release from the Heartland Poker Tour, detailing the rags-to-riches tale of Dan Zogman, the winner the day prior of the HPT event at Majestic Star over in Gary. The release stated that Zogman did something not quite Moneymaker-esque, if along the same lines, in running a $100 satellite seat all the way to the championship of the Majestic Star main event, worth some $228,000.

It being the aforementioned slow news day, I suggested we go for it, and I did the quick rewrite myself. I had to scrape a bit for details to flesh it out, in the process learning that Zogman was a resident of McHenry, IL, which is three suburbs north of Carpentersville, where I live. Which was also kinda cool, if hardly stunning: five of the six finalists in this HPT event came from the Chicago area. But to make a long story short, we got the story up for overnight, where it appeared on August 1st. I also sent off an e-mail contact late in the day to Byron Liggett, who was the press liaison for the HPT. Byron had sent the release over to John along with a photo, and just because a lot of photos don't work well in our system, I wondered what else he might have from the event. A couple of days later Byron sent over a couple of other photos, too. We ended up not being able to use them because of a technical hitch on our end, but it wasn't a big deal; the story was already aging a bit and it did have the HPT logo tied in when we first ran it, anyway.

Now, the segue:

Back in March or April, while doing some web surfing, I had encountered something called the McHenry Poker Club while searching through listings on a site called Meetup.com. One of the banes of my moving down here is that I was no longer in contact with a live poker game, as I had been (with several) up in Wisconsin, and while I hadn't been looking for any particular game, I'd definitely missed a live home game in general. That said, however, this McHenry Poker Club looked like it was a struggling entity at best, with between two and five people showing up for very occasional tournaments at a member's house.

It was about that time that my workload increased dramatically, with the WSOP looming. So I pretty much shelved any idle thoughts about learning more about the McHenry Poker Club that I had for a few months, while I took care of other business.

Funny, though, as on Thursday of last week, another message from that board popped into my inbox, saying that they were getting ready for another meet. So I thought about it, and finally typed out a message to the group saying I hoped to check them out in person and play, despite being an idle/new member, as soon as I could figure out a convenient time, since the dates they mentioned didn't work.

A few hours later, channeled through the same list, I get an e-mail from... Dan Zogman. He had also just been doing some web searching, I later found out, and also uncovered the McHenry Poker Club linkage and extended an open invitation of his own. In it, he said he knew of plenty of games in the immediate area and that new players were always welcome to show up.

So, since there was already three- or four-sigma synchronicity in play (and since I really was dying to find a live game that would fit my schedule), I e-mailed Zogman back. That was on Thursday, and I ended up being invited to his private game on Friday night the 10th, which drew 21 players (smaller than normal, for what I've been told), for both a fun NLHE tourney and a later cash game for the losers.

The poker itself isn't important, nor the stakes --- which as far as anyone is concerned, were for play money. Let's just say that I only played three pots of note in the tourney. In the first, I took down a sizable multi-way pot with a strong post-flop raise. The other two were against Dan himself. In the first, he had me in a flush-over-flush situation when we both had two clubs buried, and somehow, when he check-raised me on the turn (both of us having already made our flushes), I got away from my made hand. Then I found aces a few hands later and ended up in a pot against Dan again. In this hand, I pushed after the turn and was ahead of Dan's top pair/OESD with one card to come, but he rivered a five to make his straight and knock me out. I got my chips in with the best of it; the rest, as they say, is poker --- busted with honor, but busted nonetheless. As for Dan, a very likeable guy, whatever horseshoe he was riding was still intact, for he won the thing a few hours later. But as I said, this really wasn't about the poker.

Despite the small crowd, it was a bit of a circus atmosphere, with a news crew from the Northwest Herald there to take photos of Dan and his home game as well. Dan's got a basement decked out for poker, lemme tell ya. You'll see a glimpse of it and him by clicking here.

As for me, I'd checked my press badge at the door... almost.

When I arrived there, he and and his wife, Mary Jo Belcore-Zogman (who also plays, and plays very well) were checking out some of Dan's online press clippings from his HPT win. They happened to click on the PokerNews.com writeup while I was literally walking in the door and introducing myself to the early-arriving players, and after a couple of minutes of small talk I said to Dan and Mary Jo, "You know, there's one thing I'm curious about. The release said that you'd won your way in on a $100 satellite, but you had to win two or win a super-satellite, right?"

The reason is because HPT main event seats go for $4,000 or so, not counting the juice. Winning a $100 single-table sit-'n'-go isn't going to pay for that $4,000 seat, and it had been nagging at me, because I knew something in what had been sent to us was somehow incomplete or not quite fully explained. Not necessarily wrong, but goofy, somehow.

But Dan said, "Yeah, all the stories are wrong. I won a $450 to get in." He meant one of the regular satellites to the HPT main event, which were $400+50 to enter, not $100. And of course, all the stories would then be wrong, since they were all just rewrites --- or in the lazier cases, copy-and-pastes --- of the release that the HPT had sent out.

I asked Dan if he wanted me to fix it the following day. He wasn't concerned about it, so I didn't worry about it much more. Besides, I wasn't at his house as a reporter, even if I did make a mental note of the error; I figured I could write back to Byron Liggett (who had sent out the release) and see if he knew what was up; I'd never met Liggett but had corresponded with him just a couple of times in recent months.

Anyhow, after about seven hours of poker and one superb roast beef sandwich, I had finally exhausted my supply of play money. So I bid the night's late stragglers adieu, promised to return, and hopped in the car for the 35-minute drive back home. And I still had a little bit of work to do, though it was nearing 3:00 am. I wanted to get a story into the PN system for the overnight crowd, which my bosses like to see done, and by 4:00 am I had that already-edited story loaded in and available for public view.

I was overtired, but still not ready to sleep, so I jumped over to Bloglines to see what latest news and gossip was about. I also still had that nugget in my mind about the HPT story not being correct, when I stumbled across this post by flipchip on the LasVegasVegas.com blog. This was the first notice I'd seen that veteran poker writer Liggett, who I had just been about to contact, had passed away on Reno on Monday. And that was a wake-up slap at 4am, lemme tell ya; if it hadn't been for Liggett's HPT press release just a week before, I never would have heard the name Dan Zogman, whose house I had just spent the night at, playing cards. And about the mystery of the $450 buy-in, versus the $100 as stated in the release?

Meh. Some things just aren't that important, after all. I'm sure the HPT has other concerns at the moment, as does Liggett's family. My condolences, of course, though I barely had contact with the man. As for the wrong factoid in the release we ran, there was no way of knowing if Liggett even assembled the original information for the story... and if he was working from his home in Reno, then the answer would be very likely not, and he was just repackaging bad info that had been sent his way in the first place. Mary Jo wrote me later that they (she and Dan) hadn't met Liggett, again suggesting that Liggett wasn't at Majestic Star. Nor is this unusual. A lot of working media --- yours truly included --- do the majority of their work in a remote manner.

The HPT story as it initially ran was in error, I guess, but it's a story already losing its freshness. Zogman still won it, even if it wasn't quite as much a rags-to-riches tale as pitched. In the long run, no one will care how much Dan started with; it's the big payday on the end that's important. I quietly updated the detail in the story and don't plan on visiting it again.

But synchronicty? Oh, yeah, in spades. Sometimes life is just very spooky, know what I mean?

Thursday, August 09, 2007

More Live Poker, More Coolers :-D

Heh. Maybe the reason I prefer online is because I suck at live poker. Nahhh...

Wednesday found me scheduling a rare morning off for myself to drive down to Hollywood Casino in Aurora for another stab at their weekly $160. The tourney is a little too fast-paced (in terms of blinds) and a little too juice-heavy for me to want to make it a regular thing, but once in a while, I just want to take a shot. My first two tries had come up dry, though I'd made the top half of the field in each, with a legitimate shot at cashing each time.

After yesterday, color me oh-for-three. And what a way to go out... I've got this cooler thing down to a science.

We were inside of 30 players, with me probably in the top ten in chips, when, one hand after holding pocket kings and getting no action, I peeked under and found pocket queens. I had about 11,000 in chips (up from a start of 2,500), the blinds were 400/800 and about to jump. UTG limps, the next seat to my right pushes for another 1,000, or so, I make it 5,000 and intentionally pot-commit myself without shoving, just to try to create some confusion. Three folds from the seats to my left, and a guy across the way on the button shoves for another 4,000 or so. The small blind skedaddles, and the big blind looks absolutely pained before making the call, putting the total pot over 30,000. He's played some iffy stuff, too.

The UTG guy goes away, and even though I know my queens are beat, somewhere, I shove, because with the blinds only two seats away and ready to jump to 600/1,200, I don't have enough behind to leverage anyone anyhow. And there's a ton in the pot and I only have a few thousand more. Five kicks at a queen or some garbage straight are enough, I guesstimate, to get the last of my chips in. There's also just the slim chance --- maybe 5% --- that the two other stacks both have A-K suited or one of them has pocket jacks. Between that and the 6:1 or so I was getting on the original call, it was an easy shove.

But when the cards were turned over, was I behind? Oh, yeah...

Short stack in UTG+1: K-KMe: Q-QButton: A-ABig Blind: K-K

Junk on the flop and an ace on the turn.

I go home now.

Live poker is so-o-o-o-o-o-o rigged, don't you think? But I departed laughing --- there are situations, like these, where you are simply doomed to lose your chips.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Streaky Up, Streaky Down

The one thing about poker variance that's sometimes hardest to understand is how streaks within streaks can go in opposite directions at the same time. One would like to think that winning or losing streaks are in some form influenced by how well or not well one is playing. That is, when one is hot and confident and playing well, it seems reasonable to expect that the streak extends across all sites where one is playing, or across all formats (assuming comparative skill) or whatever.

It's really not the case. The vagaries of random distribution are such that one can run hot as hell on one site, could as ice on another, totally independent of whether one's results could be looked at as showing tilt or not. In fact, the variance can get so extreme, it can challenge the concept of what tilt really is.

Case in point, ready to be served.

I mentioned in my previous post how well I'd been running over at the Merge network, and the last week, since that post, has seen more and better. I could barely miss. The nightly $3K Guarantee that I mentioned last week, that I whined about being reformatted? After it's reworking, I cashed in the thing the next four nights in a row, including two final tables, bringing my streak to seven and three (including a win) overall. And then to top off my best-ever week on the site, I did *real* well in the $20K. I was a bad beat away from freakin' awesome, but having delivered my own rancid beat to someone earlier in the tourney, I ain't complainin'. I got by far the best side of the suckout trade.

But random distribution has a flip side, too.

I also played some at Bodog. Mind you, I'm fond of the site. I managed to find time over the weekend to play a couple of dozen tourneys, both MTTs and SNGs, and for the weekend I achieved a goose egg. Absolutely nada. Given that there were at least a half dozen SNGs in the mix, you'd think I'd be able to squeeze out a measly cash somewhere in the entire run. But nope, not a one.

So, running good, running bad. To tilt or not to tilt? That's the curious thing. The truth is that a handful of recent showings that seem unusual have a way of sticking in the mind, whether those showings are good or bad. These 'signature' showings can cloud our judgment as to how well we're really running... or if we're running any different at all.

The truth is that short-term results mean squat in terms of real skill, but it's so easy to forget that. A few dozen events, or even a few hundred, mean very little in the absence of true statistical outliers, something I've mentioned previously. Cash in seven of ten MTTs? Or even seven straight? Good run! But nothing more than that. It all ends soon enough, and then it's time to work for the next cash, however long it takes.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

You know you've got too good of a thing going when the good thing gets modified. It's one of those natural laws, Murphy's or otherwise, right? A few months ago I went on an extended rush playing Bodog turbo sit-'n'-goes, which lasted right up until they changed the format, which essentially halved my win rate (percent-wise, over break even) while I learned the nuances of the new format. Based on recent results, I'm still learning....

Now the Merge Network, which is Poker.com, Carbon Poker and a couple of other skins, has changed its evening tourney schedules. Merge is small, as you know, and the network's evening tourneys habitually feature smallish, 100-player fields and nominal overlays. My two favorites were the 7:30 CT $2,000 Guaranteed, with a $15+1.50 buy-in, and the $23+2 buy-in $3,000 Guaranteed at 8:45. The $2K always offered a $600 first prize, and the $3K brought $900 for first. Yeah, small stuff, but fun and profitable, in its own way. I'm very much in the Todd Brunson school of thought on game selection --- if I know a lower game is likelier to provide a steady, solid comparable win rate, I'll opt for it.

But back to Merge. Darned if I didn't win the $3K on Tuesday night, and not for the first time. No skill brag here --- when you catch A-A, K-K and Q-Q (twice) at the final table, you should win it. Still, it's part of a nice push I've had there when I've had the chance to play in recent months.

I opened up the software on Wednesday evening to play a bit and watched as it did another of its frequent self-upgrades. Merge updates its software more frequently than any other site I could name, including Stars or Bodog, so this was not unexpected. But what was unexpected was that the $3K was no more, at least as a $25 tourney! To quote Charlie Brown, "Auggh!" In its place was a different $3K tourney with an $11 entry. The first prize was still $810, but it means climbing over more than twice as many bodies to get there. Not that I won't try, of course. The win rate's been just too durned good.

It's odd, though. This leaves the network with only one regularly scheduled weekly event with a buy-in over $20, and that's the $20K on Sundays, which I play when I can. What it means is I no longer have as much of a reason to leave any amount of money on the site --- I can play the events I wish to with a relatively smaller 'roll, and I'll try to find a way to move the remainder over to Stars and Bodog, difficult though it is at the moment. I'm not sure that's what Merge had in mind when they made the change. They're supposed to be creating reasons for me to keep money there, not taking reasons away.

On the plus side, I think I'm going to be able to take a shot at a Heartland or Circuit satellite (or two) in the coming months. I'd like to buy in directly to the main but that will remain out of reach for a year or two, I believe. I'd be idly interested in selling a small piece of myself, but want to make sure it's largely my money on the line. It's actually more painful for me when I lose someone else's money, so I'd rather it be mostly mine at stake. Maybe I can do what that Dan Zogman guy did in the recent HPT over in Gary. Zogman, who lives only three suburbs north of me, ran $100 into $228,000 early this week.

Recent events have demonstrated to me that getting out the true and full stories of the AP and UB cheating scandals is going to entail significant legal effort, in addition to all the legwork of the past several years. Such is the nature of the beast. While I've resisted doing so for years, it's finally time to ask: Do you have some spare change to contribute to the cause? I'm going to be needing to mount both offensive and defensive legal efforts in the months ahead, and any contributions to cover these expenses are gratefully appreciated.

Who am I? A veteran writer/editor with decades of published writing credits, and at one time the Editor-in-Chief of PokerNews.com (though these days, "Tony G" is a dirty word to me). Currently continuing work on a book on the AP and UB scandals, to be published by Dimat Publishing in late 2012 or early 2013.